Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: Let me be the first to most warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, on securing this debate and once again drawing attention to the need for enlightened and critical reforms across our criminal justice system. His tenacity in bringing these matters back over and again as a former Chief Inspector of Prisons and his extensive writing and speaking have made an enormous impact. Perhaps he will be a modern-day Elizabeth Fry or John Howard.
Personally, I agree with many of the noble Lord’s comments. My own credentials go back only 44 years, to when I became a juvenile magistrate in Brixton.  I then became chairman of the court aged 32, at the time of the Brixton riots. That was a torrid, difficult and emotional time. What I felt time and again was that the young people in court were the people who had no stakeholders. They had no serious probation or supervision programme. They ended up in court because there was nowhere else for them to go.
I very much echo the noble Lord’s words about the lack of corporate memory in Whitehall. Every Minister has a new idea. Civil servants keep changing. Having a better corporate memory—I am allocating the noble Lord the role of being the corporate memory after his recital of all my noble friend Lord Baker’s policies—would be an excellent thing. We need a strategy, but above all we need an implementation plan that we hold to. I warmly endorse the noble Lord’s suggestion that responsibilities need to have named people who hold the policy dear.
There were enormous problems with transforming rehabilitation. The noble Lord has outlined how the effectively disastrous consequences of that policy came to light, with the part-privatisation of probation and 21 CRCs working alongside the probation service. Let us be clear: the probation service at that time needed reform and a complete shake-up. It had lost its way. It was old-style, bureaucratic and tired and had lost energy and ambition.
I applaud my right honourable friend in the other place, David Gauke, for having the courage to reverse the policy. It is very easy in government to feel you have to build on your predecessor’s policies and that otherwise you are being disloyal. He was considered and brave and took the view that the evidence was that the policy simply was not working. The noble Lord referred to the National Audit Office, but Sir Amyas Morse—a public servant in whose debt we should all be because of his effect on the reform of many public services—said in his report that:
“The Ministry set itself up to fail in how it approached probation reforms. Its rushed roll-out created significant risks that it was unable to manage. These have had far reaching consequences. Not only have these failings been extremely costly for taxpayers, but we have seen the number of people on short sentences recalled to prison skyrocket. It is welcome that the Ministry’s proposals address some of the issues that have caused problems, but risks remain. It needs to pause and think carefully about its next steps so that it can get things right this time and improve the quality of probation services”.
I salute that view and believe that our debate is part of that review of what has gone wrong in the past and how we can dedicate ourselves to improving services for the future.
I am delighted that the Government and Prime Minister were able to invest so generously in our criminal justice system with 20,000 police officers and additional resources for the Prison Service. But we are never going to have an effective probation service without the proper resources and respect. The parallel I would draw is the lessons from children’s services and mental health services. Enoch Powell derided the great institutions and asylums. It was a case of out of sight, out of mind—institutionalisation meant that psychiatric patients were in fact damaged by that process. We are familiar with that in the prison world, in spite of all the reforms and efforts that have been made.
You could never have effective care in the community until you had what was called “assertive outreach”. The difference between being in the community and being in an institution, with one telephone call every two weeks, is too great. Community programmes mean effective, tenacious and assertive programmes; that is the lesson we have learnt from psychiatric patients and from children in children’s homes. The alternative to being in a children’s home—as dangerous as that often was, as we now well know—was not just to have a social worker popping in once a month but to have a programme that involved health visitors, nursery schools, neighbours and so on. Our priority and our message must be to take this opportunity and to take all we have learnt and the comments of enough wise people—we do not need any more—and say that we need to make probation work.
We also need community chaplains. I want to praise the police commissioners, mayors and high sheriffs, who have become advocates in communities up and down the country for enlightened prison reform and responsible community services and, above all, drawing in the voluntary sector. All of us have referred on previous occasions to magnificent initiatives making a real impact. In my own former area, the Watts Gallery—founded by GF Watts, a prison reformer—now provides work in HMP Bronzefield, HMP Send and Feltham youth institution. Pimlico Opera, established by Wasfi Kani, has done similar for many years. The other day, the wonderful High Sheriff of Oxfordshire was talking about Fine Cell Work, of which the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is a patron, and the wonderful charity Aspire—I will say no more about that, because I hope the noble Lord, Lord Jay, will comment on this vital area in great detail.
We know what we need to do, and we now have the energy, resources and determination to successfully deliver effective probation in the community.

Earl of Courtown: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for securing this debate. Many experts in this field have contributed to the debate, and I assure noble Lords that I will draw it to the attention of the relevant Minister.
Improving the management and treatment of offenders is a priority for the Government. The criminal justice system must become more effective at rehabilitating offenders—a point made by many noble Lords—so that they do not go on to commit more crime and to create more victims of crime. Punishment and rehabilitation are not opposites; we have to do both.
We are working to reform and improve provision across both prison and the community. There are real challenges for our system, but by investing in our prisons, strengthening our probation system and taking a whole-system approach to criminal justice, we can provide the right support for offenders and set them on a path towards rehabilitation.
As noble Lords have commented, the Prime Minister has recently announced more resources for the criminal justice system: 20,000 more police on our streets; 10,000 more prison places; £100 million for prison security; and an extra £85 million for the Crown Prosecution Service. Noble Lords will therefore appreciate that we take the management and treatment of offenders extremely seriously.
I hope to address most of the important points that noble Lords have raised during the course of the debate. If I do not cover them, I promise to write and place copies in the Library.
Noble Lords will have seen that we recently published our response to last summer’s consultation on the future of probation services, Strengthening Probation, Building Confidence. That response sets out our plans to build on the positive changes introduced by Transforming Rehabilitation while addressing the key challenges in the system. To deliver these arrangements, we are ending community rehabilitation company contracts early in 2021 and streamlining responsibilities for public, private and voluntary sector partners. Once these arrangements are in place, I am confident that we will improve the supervision and treatment of offenders from first contact with probation to last.
We are planning to bring all offender supervision under one organisation, moving away from the current division of offenders between the National Probation Service and community rehabilitation companies. This will allow probation officers to be even more effective at protecting the public, because we will see more efficient allocation of resources, more effective enforcement of orders and closer supervision of offenders.
Most noble Lords mentioned rehabilitation. We will improve the range and quality of rehabilitative interventions so these can better target the needs of offenders, including vulnerable offenders and those with  mental health and alcohol and substance abuse problems. We intend to commission a significant percentage of these services through a dynamic framework, which will enable us to engage directly with smaller providers including those from the voluntary and community sectors who can often provide a more tailored and locally responsive approach.
Offenders also have contact with the probation service in the weeks leading up to and following their release from prison. We recognise the enormous importance of effective resettlement services in reducing reoffending. Offenders can currently expect contact from probation services 12 weeks before release, but this will increase to seven or eight months before release under the new model, giving much more time for resettlement plans to be made. We will align arrangements, with new resources being assigned to the supervision of offenders in custody to ensure a safe and planned transition from custody to community.
As part of work across government to tackle rough sleeping, something which was mentioned by many noble Lords, we are investing £6.4 million in a pilot scheme to support individuals released from three prisons. Working with the voluntary sector, the pilots—as mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Bichard and Lord Dholakia—will support low-risk male prisoners to access and sustain tenancies in private rented accommodation. Individuals will receive wraparound support and we will evaluate the pilots to inform plans for further rollout.
To manage and treat offenders effectively, we also need to ensure our prisons are fundamentally safe and secure. That means preventing items from entering our estate which undermine safety, security and rehabilitation, including drugs, mobile phones and other contraband.
The noble Lord, Lord Beith, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, also mentioned safety and security as well as overcrowding. Reducing overcrowding is a top priority. There will be £2.5 billion of spending on 10,000 new places and an extensive refurbishment has been commissioned on decommissioned prison places. A further £100 million will be spent on security, with airport-style X-ray scanners, for example, and metal detectors at the gates. In August, the Prime Minister announced a £100 million investment in prison security as part of a wider crackdown on crime behind bars. This is the latest in a series of investments to increase security and stability in prisons, including a prior announcement of £70 million.
Alongside improvements to security, we are working to ensure that our prisons have sufficient capacity. As I mentioned, over the summer the Prime Minister announced that up to £2.5 billion will be spent on creating 10,000 additional places. Our ambition is to create a decent, safe and secure estate that is sustainable into the future and provides better opportunities to reform offenders.
Being able to safely and securely hold those sentenced to custody must be the first thing we get right in prisons, but we must also provide the right support and incentives to rehabilitate offenders, as a number of noble Lords mentioned. Our prison officers play a vital role in supporting and challenging offenders to make the right choices. We have recruited more than  4,700 prison officers since October 2016, surpassing our original target of 2,500 and returning us to approximately the same level as in March 2012. This has enabled us to improve our support and case management of prisoners, with the introduction of the new offender management in custody model to all male closed prisons. Each individual will be allocated a prison officer to act as their key worker, who will guide, support and coach individuals through their custodial sentence.
A number of noble Lords mentioned women in prison. We have developed a bespoke management approach for women which recognises the different challenges and opportunities in the women’s estate. The women’s policy framework mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, was published in 2018. It includes requirements to support women to find housing, manage money and access education. We recognise that women’s needs are different, and I commit to writing to the noble Baroness to give further details on the issues she raised.
As I mentioned, we are working to ensure that prison offers meaningful opportunities for rehabilitation. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and the noble Lords, Lord Marks, Lord Beecham, Lord Beith and Lord Jay, all mentioned this issue. This year, we marked the first anniversary of the Education and Employment Strategy, which will ensure prison is a place where offenders can develop the skills they need to secure employment on release. We know that employment is one of the key factors that will determine whether they reoffend.
We are very thankful for my noble friend Lord Farmer’s report on the importance of family engagement to reduce reoffending. We are also grateful for his second report, which focused on female offenders, and we are currently considering its recommendations.
Moving on to youth justice—mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who has extensive experience in this area—alongside the reforms to the adult custodial estate, we are committed to improving the safety and life chances of children in custody. This is the reason why we began a youth justice reform programme in 2017, investing in staff, education and, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, psychological services as well. It is so important to get these things right for these young people.
The noble Lord, Lord McNally, raised the subject of sport in prison, and I thank him for doing so. We have increased the number of PE staff: there are  40 football clubs delivering coaching qualifications, and 50% of prisons participate in parkrun.
The Youth Custody Service has started implementing a new evidence-based behaviour management strategy, aimed at incentivising good behaviour and building positive relationships. To tackle the root causes of youth offending, we have introduced the first of our youth justice specialists in custody. We are also expending front-line staff capacity in public sector youth offender institutions. At the end of March this year, the Youth Custody Service had 348 more front-line officers than at the start of our reform programme, an increase of 40%. In July, we were delighted to announce that the  Oasis Charitable Trust has been selected to operate  the first secure school in Medway, which will open  in 2020.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, both mentioned in their speeches—it was a major point of the noble Lord’s speech—the subject of an external review. It is a valuable point, but the whole system is under review. We are making changes to probation services and investing in prisons. We have commissioned experts to review areas, such as my noble friend Lord Farmer’s review on family ties.
The noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Beecham, also mentioned the fact that probation should be localised. Our probation reforms will create 12 new regional probation directors to ensure that services reflect local needs and use local providers and that probation works more closely with police, courts and prisons.
A number of noble Lords mentioned issues relating to mental health and violence in prisons and the unacceptable levels of violence and self-harm. Staff are now undergoing revised training on suicide and self-harm. This is a move in the right direction and, hopefully, will have an effect in due course.
The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and other noble Lords mentioned the subject of universal credit and what exactly prisoners can access. Offenders can access a DWP work coach prior to their release. We will continue to work with the Department for Work and Pensions on this issue.
The noble Lord, Lord Jay, talked about education and employment. I can tell the noble Lord that additional powers have been devolved to governors to give them more control over their education budget so that they can target areas where required.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester asked about funding for women’s centres in the new probation system. We are determined to ensure that the probation service does meet the needs of women. Women’s centres are a non-negotiable part of the answer. The right reverend Prelate also mentioned the concordat, which we are looking to publish in the next few months. As far as housing and homelessness for women is concerned, this is subject to evaluation but our homelessness pilot will be rolled out and can be delivered for any offender, including women.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, mentioned IPPs, which have been covered numerous times in this House over recent years. Public protection must remain our priority. At the moment, there are no plans to change the release test or recall system, as it is applied to IPP prisoners.
The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, also spoke about levels of violence in prisons. Violence levels are too high, and violence against staff will not be tolerated. The Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act increases the penalty to 12 months; prison officers are included as emergency workers.
The noble Baroness, Lady Healy, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, also mentioned sentencing. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has  announced an urgent review to break the reoffending cycle. We have announced our intention to carry out legislative reform, including reforms to community penalties, which will offer the appropriate level of punishment while tackling the underlying causes of reoffending.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, asked about disability awareness training for staff. This is an important point, and I can reassure the noble Baroness that all officers receive broad equalities training over a number of different modules.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, also spoke about how the voluntary sector can help. We want to see a clearer role for voluntary providers in probation delivery. The National Probation Service will in the future be able to directly commission services which encourage participation of smaller suppliers and, as I mentioned before, address the needs of local areas.
I close by thanking again the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and all those who have raised important issues in this debate. Getting the supervision and treatment of offenders right is absolutely vital, both for their benefit and to prevent reoffending leading to further victims. Taken together, the measures I have outlined will ensure that we are best supporting offenders to turn their lives around, whether that is in prison, youth custody or the community.

Lord Hain: My Lords, why do not the Government listen to hauliers, businesspeople, trade unions and every Northern Ireland political party except the DUP—including the Ulster Unionists and the cross-party Alliance Party—who all oppose this proposal, which undermines the all-Ireland economy and betrays the Good Friday and Belfast agreement? Surely the noble Baroness must accept that the customs border proposed is unworkable because there are no enforcement measures, leaving it wide open to smuggling and criminality. It is a virtual hard border, not a physical hard border. How could Brussels enforce its own rules, except by erecting infrastructure for security and checks on this external frontier of the European Union, at least to obey World Trade Organization rules? Surely this is the worst of both worlds: customs clearance centres and arrangements, including tariffs, that would be a target for civil disobedience and, perhaps, paramilitary attack, a border that is not even secure, and a shift from no borders to up to four borders. I appeal to every Member of Parliament—certainly every Labour MP—to vote against it to protect the peace process and progress on the island of Ireland.

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone: My Lords, to hear the noble and right reverend Lord is really like having an hour’s version of “Thought for the Day”; we all feel better and wiser. His measured tone and words of wisdom and the balance with which he puts forward the debate are incontrovertible and critically important at this time. He does not say that human rights should dominate trade deals, but that they should be respected. It is in that balanced mode that I want to make a contribution. I also want to very warmly welcome the Minister to her place. As a hugely impressive and highly ethical person, her involvement in this field is very welcome.
I have to make an abject apology to the House, because my own personal human rights and well-being will be severely curtailed if I do not leave by 6.30 pm. I had no idea that the debate would be going on so late this evening and I will have serious domestic difficulties, which I will not go into further detail about. I apologise to the noble and right reverend Lord, the Minister and the leaders of the Benches and I will most definitely read the material very carefully.
This debate focuses on two really important  priorities in our country. Over the centuries, we have been a trading nation and an international perspective has long been at the heart of our commercial, social and political traditions. Similarly, part of our identity is a fierce commitment to promoting economic and democratic rights here and around the world, combating sources of exploitation and oppression. The noble and right reverend Lord mentioned some countries and areas where there is profound concern and, indeed, deteriorating situations.
Last week marked the close of the 42nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, reminding us that support for human rights is a pillar of our responsibilities within the rules-based international system. I believe that we have a proud record of impactful action around the world, both independently and in bilateral and multilateral collaboration. I also want to praise the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and DfID for their tenacious and principled work promoting human rights, which has included work with civil society organisations in Zimbabwe and with the Nepalese Government on capacity-building programmes; the conference held by the former Foreign Secretary and my constituency successor, Jeremey Hunt, on media freedom because of the appalling concern over the safety of journalists; and the work with Access Now and its #KeepItOn campaign to fight undemocratic internet shutdowns during elections. That has all been in the last year alone. There is also our work through the Human Rights Council, which only recently passed resolutions on Syria, Myanmar, Burundi, Yemen and the DRC. The Westminster Foundation for Democracy works in Mozambique, Kenya and Sierra Leone on disabilities. There has also been work in Uganda and Nigeria on underrepresented young people.
There are a huge number of areas where we have been willing and wanting to take a lead and to demonstrate our commitment. Perhaps most striking is the work of our former Prime Minister, Theresa May, on the Modern Slavery Act, both as Home Secretary and as Prime Minister. It is quite extraordinary: every company listed on the FTSE 100 has to make a declaration in its annual report that it has not been involved in modern slavery. This is quite a remarkable, almost draconian step, which I am delighted to say other countries are now following.
The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, has worked on religious rights, as the noble and right reverend Lord said, in Iraq, Sudan, Indonesia, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and so on and so forth. The Commonwealth also plays a great role. I would like to say more about the Commonwealth, like my noble friend Lord Howell; its commitment to human rights has also been extraordinarily important.
The link between human rights and trade deals  is relatively recent. Talking of trade in general, free trade—in a rules-based system—has benefited the world enormously. It has taken more than a billion people out of absolute poverty, improving the fulfilment of the right to life, the right to an adequate standard of living, and the right to health, adequate nourishment, safe drinking water and sanitation. In addition, global poverty rates have fallen from 35% in 1990 to 10%; the global hunger index has come down 30% since 2000; there has been a 5.5 year increase in global life expectancy; the gap between the most and least developed countries has shrunk; and global illiteracy has halved since 1990. This comes from prosperity, wealth creation and trade, so I am an unequivocal believer in the idea that business and trade are the solution, not the cause, of the world’s problems.
Deeply alarming instances of sinister protectionism are emerging on the world stage. We live in an incredibly interconnected world: the WTO says that the volume  of international trade has multiplied 38 times since 1945, and the McKinsey Global Institute found that goods, services and financial flows increased by 400% between 1990 and 2012. However, while trade and connectivity have led to impressive strides towards many of the sustainable development goals, we are increasingly aware of ongoing and emerging global human rights challenges. This is extraordinarily worrying. This is the 13th consecutive year of global democratic decline, according to Freedom House. The noble and right reverend Lord has spoken about the situation in China and how sinister that is, and we all watch Hong Kong with great concern.
Trade and international agreements impact all areas of a country’s public policy, and we should take a holistic, inclusive approach involving comprehensive impact assessments. The Minister has already dismissed outright the idea that there will be a deterioration in the standard of human rights protection in the new world. It will be up to us in the United Kingdom to develop this instrument, to use it proportionately and in a balanced manner, and to energetically promote trade and human rights—which is always very much in our hearts. There should be no dogmatism. If, for example we did not want to trade with people who still had capital punishment, our relationship with Japan, America, Singapore and others would not exist: it has to be proportionate.
I will say a little more about what business does on its own, without trade policies and agreements. When I was young, Barclays was vilified for trading in South Africa. One of my jobs in government was to take President Nelson Mandela, on his first visit to the UK after leaving prison, across to South Africa House. What did he say? He said that anti-apartheid was simple; what was difficult was building a country, and how indebted they were to all those enlightened international businesses that had hung on in in  South Africa and taught their people enlightened employment practices. My father was a management and leadership guru. He used to go to Anglo-American, go down the mines and train the supervisors on better employment practices. The commitment of many global businesses to female empowerment, anti-child labour practices, sustainability and anti-corruption measures is phenomenal. Whatever you think of Coca-Cola, it is a precious brand whose work in these areas is phenomenal.
Business organisations, therefore, and the new review of corporate governance in the United Kingdom—which is developing Section 172 of the Companies Act by talking about “purpose”, “mission” and “stakeholder commitment”—are showing a trend that says that business has to earn its right to trade. With support, encouragement and determination, trade agreements, the role of business and the development of human rights should be able to march hand in hand, as long as we remain vigilant, determined and committed to making the world a better place for us all.